Halaszle, Hungarian Fisherman's Soup

Halaszle is a soup of freshwater fish, onion and a serious quantity of ground paprika, cooked by tradition in an open kettle over a fire on the riverbank. Carp is the usual base, sometimes with catfish, pike-perch or whatever the mixed catch gave. The two schools disagree with each other in public: Szeged builds a stock from small fish and passes it through a sieve, then poaches thick slices of carp in the strained liquid; Baja leaves the broth unstrained and ladles it over thin matchstick pasta cooked separately. Both are hotter with paprika than most Hungarian cooking, and both are winter food, eaten on Christmas Eve in a great many households.

What you actually see

• The Szeged style - a strained, smooth broth with poached slices of carp.
• The Baja style - unstrained soup poured over thin matchstick pasta.
• The kettle - a cast-iron pot on a tripod over a wood fire, still the standard method.
• The Baja cook-off - a mass open-air cooking event held in the town each July.

When to go

Autumn and winter, when it belongs, and when the fish is at its best. Christmas is its high season and many restaurants in the south put on a version through December. The summer cooking festivals in Baja and along the Tisza are a spectacle but they are hot, crowded and less about eating well than about the number of kettles going at once.

Honest expectations

It is full of small bones and eating it neatly is not really possible. Pond-raised carp can taste muddy, and there is no way to tell before it arrives. The paprika heat swings from mild to fierce with no warning on the menu. It is a heavy dish in summer, and the versions served in central Budapest are usually a pale imitation of what the southern towns cook.

Nearby

Szeged's cathedral square and the Tisza embankment are the natural setting for it.